jpomz said:

...are you kidding about Deathwatch? It's ridiculously easy to one-shot a Space Marine. And both Librarians in DW and Astropaths in RT are, on the whole, much more balanced than the psykers at any level of DH play.

Kshatriya said:

What?

AluminiumWolf said:

You cannot complain that DH does not model being AWESUM! well because it was never intended to do that. It would be like complaining that a rules set for Napoleonic wargames doesn't model small-scale Vietnam skirmishes accurately. Now, you can complain that they haven't made the game you wanted (I know, as someone earlier mentioned, that there were many complaints about this when it first came out). However my recommendation for those wanting to play the big, over the top, heroes of 40k should look at Deathwatch, or maybe even Rogue Trader. Those games are just as limited in their scope, but the characters you play are more in the mold of your 40k special characters.

Does anyone know what this white "thing" I am getting over the forums is? I can move it away, but it appears every time I open a new page on the forums?

-""Linear fighters, quadratic wizards" is a stupid, broken trope that only exists because of skinny nerds' revenge fantasies about the muscular jocks who wedgied them in high school. It does nothing but alienate players who don't fancy playing various spellcasters all the time.

First roleplaying game, D&D, came from a fascination with fantasy novels, which in turn came from the fascination with mythology. Both fantasy and various mythologies are chock-full of warriors who wielded no magic, yet accomplished the most epic feats. Beowulf swam from Norway to Denmark and fought horrible sea beasts while at it. Heracles bested titans with his might. Gilgamesh challenged the gods on a regular basis. Conan killed sorcerers and fell beasts with no problem. It was Tulkas, the least magical and most fighty of the Ainur, who bested Morgoth twice.

If the game has no idea on handling fighters like that along with reality-warping wizards, it should either nerf wizards to an appropriate level or ban fighters altogether, rather than presenting players with false choices."

Yes and no. The truth is that in many stories "magical" characters (in the broadest sense, ie I am including others with supernatural special abilities like telepathy and the like) are kept in balance with figures in the same world through the power of plot. Many of the abilities shown by "magical" characters, looked at logically, just make them more able by default than anyone else in their "setting", its just that they don't outshine other characters due to the way their abilities are used in the story. Take, for example, Gandalf. He uses magic, we know that. OK, it is a world full of magic, normally affecting things in subtle ways, but he is one of the few who can use it in a more direct manner. However, most of the time he doesn't use it for anything special. The main ways we see him use it are to provide light in darkness and to enhance his fireworks. We see him use it "offensively" in the Hobbit, but there he sets pine-cones on fire to hurl at wolves. Why doesn't he use his magic more often, or in a more blatant manner? While magic in Lord of the Rings is more subtle than most fantasy roleplay settings we know he does indeed have great power (it is why he is the only one of the Fellowship able to challange the Balrog). And it is not exactly like he is a slouch in other departments either as compensation. He is an accomplished swordsman, and the days long fight with the Balrog demonstrates he has superhuman levels of endurance (but then he isn't really a human so...), reaching those of mythical heroes in many traditional myths. His magic sets him above the other characters, yet he doesn't use it much in any manner that has significant impact. Why? There is no rules about the use of magic explained in the story, preventing him using it more frequently. Instead it is power of plot and characterisation. It doesn't serve the story or the writing of his character for him to do so, so he doesn't. He only brings it out when the story determines that there is no other option (ie, against the Balrog).

This is true of other characters with special abilities (not just the specifically magical), like Spock, who looked at objectively is just a "more powerful" character than anyone else in Star Trek. His "disadvantages" are of a type which don't generally directly impinge on his actual abilities, yet are very important in plot terms, while his "advantages" (greater strength, discipline, limited telepathy, "magic" ability to knock people out etc) only have an impact when plot demands it, or are compensated for in some way (opposing him with a more powerful foe, incapacitating him or his abilities somehow, or turning him into the obstacle that must be overcome, rather than a solution to the problem).

The problem is not that magic (or other supernatural abilities) are more powerful than the mundane. In fact, normally you would expect them to be. Why would anyone bother otherwise, particularly in settings where the power comes with some sort of risk (which is quite common)? The problem is when it comes to using magic in a roleplaying game. While some people are willing (and mature enough) to play a game where some characters are just more powerful than others, most of the time people don't want to be massively outshone and/or want to make full use of the abilities presented to their characters. If Gandalf was a PC we would probably be running around "I am going to Flames of Arnor that goblin!" while as Spock would be punching his way through bad guys like they were chaff (even though fist fights are Kirk's job) and then using Mind Melds to extract information forcefully from every opponent. Roleplaying games try to balance this somehow (normally), usually not terribly successfully. D&D arbitrarily decided that wizards couldn't wear armour (I know magic users often don't, even before D&D, but there are few settings were there is explicitly stated to be some reason for this other than narrative style), and that they had a rubbish number of hit points. This of course doesn't really balance them. Instead it makes them next to useless early on, when their limited magic ability doesn't compensate for their pathetic combat abilities, and then isn't that much of a disadvantage when their magic really takes off and means that they can more than compensate for their disadvantages. Dark Heresy tries to compensate for Psykers being very powerful (which is entirely in keeping with the setting) by making it dangerous every time you use a power, however powerful you might be and however weak the power. Now, this wasn't entirely successful, and not entirely in keeping with the setting (a powerful psyker should be able to wield their abilities in a limited sense without much if any risk), but of course the Primaris Psyker removed this attempt at balance completely, and added further broken abilities (certain psychic powers and Unnatural Willpower spring to mind at the moment) just making them into that "I win" button. Even if it is in keeping with the setting, it is not in keeping with a player character.

Yes, it is easy to one shot a space marine. Unfortunately this is down to trying to make the system work beyond its capabilities. As Space Marines are massively tough compared to Dark Heresy characters they had to boost the damage that could be inflicted to a Space Marine. It also had to cope with the stupid levels of ability that certain marine careers get at higher levels (soak on Techmarines, for example. Rank 5 our Techmarine had a soak in the high 20s, compared to ours still in the teens. Nothing short of a plasma cannon was much of a threat to him), so things have possibly massive damage. However, this is usually in the form of large numbers of dice, which makes them very swingy and quite easily do hideous damage to "normal" marines. So, bizarrely, it is because they are so massively overpowered that they are so vulnerable.

Kshatriya said:

Well, Space Marines are occasionally killed with a single shot in the Black Library novels. Considering that DW Marines are flat-out immune to damage from most non-Heavy weapon or non-Horde attacks, I don't think it's a bad thing that there should be something out there that they have to be cautious about...

I see the white thing. Is is an ad that isn't loading properly?

--

borithan said:

Of course I can complain. Not only was Dark Heresy totally not what I wanted from a 40k roleplaying game, but it has hamstrung efforts to make games I do like by imposing a system that is totally inappropriate for high end action.

I mean, bloody hell, who could have predicted that people might want to play something other than useless losers in 40k?

If you want to consider acolytes useless losers, well...you obviously haven't played the Haarlock Legacy.

Big bloody white thing frak off!

Anyway, at Borithian, I totally agree about your balance comments. We never cared that the wizard was more powerful in d&d. The fighter could hack things ALL DAY and the wizard depended on that.

Who says rank one DH characters aren't bad ass. My Feral World Assassin has been a total bad ass right from the ord go, brecause that's who he s. Simple.

I hope my typingi okay, I've been typing into the white void, so apologies if this is lessthan legible.

Z

Kshatriya said:

Agreed. We have a martially oriented party adwe have been frakking **** up rght through this campaign. Houseof Dust ad Ash was the same. I've always played my character as a bad ass, and his combat abilities have been up to the task right from the beginning.

Z

Zakalwe said:

A D&D wizard who relies on fighters for anything past level six is either unaware of the full capabilities offered by his class or deliberately limiting himself for the sake of being nice to fighters. It's hard to run out of spells when you can win an encounter with 2-3 of them, and that's outside of things like cleaning the entire dungeon all by yourself with one casting of Soul Jar.

Even if the wizard is deliberately limiting himself, most people I know don't enjoy the idea that all the things their characters accomplish are only possible because another character kindly chooses to let him.

Zakalwe said:

This is very true.

WE once had a d&d game where I was a half orc fighter thief who had a gemstone that prevented him being detected by magical means. Our wizard was blind and had a magical 'eye' with which to see. Oncewe all clicked that he couldn't see me I had a field day. Poor bugger lived in fear because everyone else thought my character was well intentioned, when in fact he was anything but. Pet wizard, yes plaese.

What level was that? Because I can already see several ways he could have put you back in place, depending on the level.

I think they should release ascension as a different product, a full line of support to hammerout the messyness and make it viable, show how it was meant o be played. Just my two sense. Or just tell us to run rogue trader with our ascension characters, that works too. Thanks for all the answers guys, got a lot more info then i expected.

Morangias said:

It was about level 7 or 8 I believe. It was kind of our sweet spot. We never really ventured much beyond 10 because it wasn't as much fun for us.

Our DM generally kept things in check by controlling what the wizard had in their spellbook. The player had a fair bit of choice, but It wasn't a case of just pick whatever you wanted and we had to make the INT chack to learn it. Importantly Contingency was a RARE spell, and even though we manipulatd the system a fair bit we weren't terribly inclined to outright min-maxing. It was second edition so no Sorcerors or anything like that. I usually played good characters by the way, but he (Scorpio) was a BAAAAAD bugger. Funny how the guys all still remeber him.

It was about twelve years ago though so details are a little fuzzy. I do recall as background my charater had run away from an 'evil' party and hooked up with the PCs claiming "Don't hate me because I'm ungly, THEY did it to me" (he was scarred right up one side, and otherwise covered in death-cult tattoos, and they still fell for it). Ha! He had ripped off the gem from his last party which was led by an 18/00 Chaotic-Evil Anti-Paladin that my character was **** scarred of because the Anti Paladin had thust my character into a pool of acid to retrieve the gem. The other PCs didn't know it but the AP was still after him.

In addition, NO MORE WHITE THINGY,YAY.

Huh, AD&D was a tiny bit better when it comes to fighters vs casters, or so I heard. Perhaps he couldn't have countered you back then, he sure could have if you played 3.x.

Also, you say "no Sorcerers" as if it somehow made the balance better. Well, spontaneous casters are much better balanced with the rest of the world than prepared casters are in 3.x, because while they're able to cast more spells, their selection is limited and they can never hope to have answers to all the problems.

Tying this tangent back into 40k, DH psykers are more like D&D wizards, while psykers in later systems are more like sorcerers - the former having a much wider selection of powers and the latter having to focus on a smaller list of powers but having more reliable access to it. And, like in D&D, post-DH psykers are much better balanced thanks to that.

Continuing the analogy, Primaris is an epic level wizard with a ton of broken prestige classes levels that let him effectively remove all the previous limitations on his spellcasting. Guess that explains why I hate them so much.

Stormtrooper is definitelly the worst class designed on this suplement. Not only he doesn't get features as near epic as the rest , but at the first two career tables he gets individual skil l advances rather than skill masteries/paragon talents...what the hell? He doesn't even gets an unnatural trait to cope with the rest of the cadre.

Havelock Victus said:

You forgot to mention that his unique special ability only functions with his quite pathetic starting gear. Because surely no Inquisitor ever would think of equipping his trusted associate with anything better than the standard issue gear for inquisitorial redshirts.

Morangias said:

While I agree that the Stormtrooper is quite weak in relative terms, I have one little point about the special ability only working for hellguns, and that is you don't give out your best wargear to the cannon fodder.

Mwah ha ha haaaaaaaaa...............

Sorry to drag things back to the Assassin issue, but how do you guys think the Feint action should interact with the Temple Assassin's ability to dodge anything? Given that Feint seems to give a flat "cannot", I would have thought it overrides the latter ability, allowing Vindicare Assassins could be countered relatively easily by an adversary or Horde with high weapon skill and a willingness to Feint first and stab later....

Wait. How is primaris broken? I did a read through, all his powers are combat heavy.

jpomz said:

Exactly; it seems he's too much combat oriented that he's broken; don't ask me the logic behind that, I have no clue, but this it what I'm feeling from the pages of roll-around talks

jpomz said:

The Primaris is stupidly broken because the career allows a character to attain insane levels of destructive potential.

I will admit this, I usually scoff when people make the argument that all classes in a game should be balanced. To me balance belongs in computer-games, while fun, freedom and adherence to fluff should be paramount in Pen and Paper games. So when I saw that the Primaris seemed very strong I thought "Meh, in 40k lore a psyker can take on most anyone in a 1 on 1 situation, depending on what powers he can manifest" and when people cried "foul" I didn't think much of it.

Then I played a Primaris.

The career is broken to the point of the idiotic and needs a fix to fit in, in any way, shape or form, with the rest of the game.

I will not describe in great detail how stupidly broken it is, but I will give one combat example and one theoretical example of how OP the Primaris is.

a GM has 4 chaos spacemarines waiting for the players in the control room of a spacestation.

1st round a CSM fires his bolter at the psyker. The psyker, gazing with distaste at the hopelessly impotent boltshells, harmlessly impacting on his Barrier (Psykokinesis) and his Telekinetic shield that adds 5-8, or somesuch, to his existing 8 armor(power armor). He is completely untouched by every attempt to break through his defenses.

Mechanically he cuts all damage in half, then reduced it by 8(armor) and ...lets say 6(Telekinetic Shield), before subtracting his 4(in this case) TB from the final, measly damage.

Then he proceeds to oneshot 2 of the marines with firestorm, doing 60+ damage in an area of effect.

And then his turn ends.

Now there are ways to work around this. This -could- just be the psyker being really, really powerful and add to the feel of the universe. Indeed it could have IF IT HAD BEEN INTENTIONAL! But the absolute disregard for how amazingly one-sided almost every encounter becomes, establishes that either they glossed over this part when writing the rules, or they don't care.

Here's the ultimate argument that the class, as it is now, is broken as all hell.

3 powers. Thats all you need.

Burning Apocalypse Rank III (Inferno), Cellular control and Regenerate.

So let's take it step by step.

Psyker: "I am angry/dissatisfied/bored/insertmovitationhere and I wish to take it out on EVERYONE!"

*manifest regenerate* I won't even bother to write stats here, because you can manifest any of these powers at ascension level, even while fettered, without much trouble.

*manifest cellular control* with this power you make yourself immune to fatigue.

*manifest inferno*

Here's the stupid part. So the psyker manifests inferno, instantly incinerating anything in a 20meter radius, dealing 1d10xWPbonus damage. This can be anything from an average of... lets say 30-ish damage(for really low rolling or low wp psykers) up towards 80-ish damage (Not even counting the potential for unnatural willpower).

Now for every round after the initial one, the gigantic ball of fire spreads another 10 meters in all directions. And this KEEPS HAPPENING! Oh but the power ensures that this cannot continue, because the psyker is forced to test or become fatigued, eventually succumbing to the strain of his inferno, collapsing and being swallowed by the flames.

However let's ignore that since we're immune to fatigue, and keep expanding our sphere of flame. As our slowmoving exterminatus slowly scours the world, 10 meters every 10 second, like the heartbeat of a lazily expanding sun, ceramite and pools of water CAN (at GMs discretion) protect from the fiery doom, slowly lighting the entire world on fire. However if this happens at GMs discretion, then the GM looses credit if he does not see that once this roaring inferno have been roasting the world for days, any deep pool of water have evaporated and any construction has been reduced to molten slag.

Tadaaa, stupid, broken career gets to stay stupid and broken. I retired my psyker immediately after realizing this and I will not be putting another one back in business, unless I'll either focus entirely on Telepathy and divination, or until we houserule (or FFG erratas) the career into the ground.

I realize there is a list as long as my arm, citing reasons for why the Primaris is broken, but those 2 there, were the examples I had, off the top of my head.

Hope it was helpful.

-Nearyn

It was never about the Ascended Psychic Powers, because those are mostly pathetic compared to what base powers from DH do. Fortunately, the Primaris still has access to the wonderfully varied list of useful and efficient powers from DH core.

No, the Primaris is broken because he can manifest all his powers at full efficiency without risking phenomena at all. All scalable values in psychic powers are keyed off either WP Bonus (which doesn't change whether you use the power fettered, unfettered or pushed) or off the overbleed (and you can generate plenty of overbleed when your Unnatural WP x3 ensures most powers are passed automatically, but you still roll five dice without any risk for yourself).

Primaris can outperform anyone at pure damage, but this in no way stops him from using all those Telepathy and Divination powers that make investigations and machinations a breeze.

jpomz said:

The Primaris is pretty much a god made flesh. The other PCs become pretty superfluous with him present. In terms of combat ability he's pretty much unbeatable, easily handling greater daemons and the like. He also has access to the regular DH powers, which he excels at. So yeah, with a handful of powers he can do whatever the hell he wants and nobody can stop him.

The biggest problem with such a character is that it's pretty much impossible to challenge him. But it's also obvious that he wasn't supposed to be this powerful - this wasn't the designers intent. They just didn't consider the full implications of all the abilities they gave him, accidentally creating a monster that just doesn't work in the game.

Well, I suppose a Null armed with an Eviscerator would put a cramp on his day ...